Advantages of Play
"Taking Play Seriously" - The New York Times (Feb 2008)
"Research Says" - What Kids Need (June 2002)
"The Serious Need for Play - Free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter and less stressed" - Scientific American (Jan 2009)
The Book "Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul" by Stuart Brown - Amazon and U.S. News and The New York Times Blog
 "Play's the Thing, a new book argues that play may be the primary means nature has found to develop our brains." - The Atlantic (May 2010)
"Parents and educators who favor traditional classroom-style learning over free, unstructured playtime in preschool and kindergarten may actually be stunting a child’s development instead of enhancing it, according to a University of Illinois professor who studies childhood learning and literacy development." - Science Daily (Feb 2009)
"Forget all the media products for babies on the market and go for the classic building blocks, suggests a new study linking playing with blocks with improved language acquisition in toddlers." - The Vancouver Sun (Nov 2006)
"In an article published in the April issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, Sergio and Vivian Pellis of the University of Lethbridge reviewed multiple studies involving animals, and found a link between rough and tumble play and social competence." - Science Daily (March 2007)
"He and his colleagues exposed half of a group of rats to a traumatic experience (half were controls). They then enabled half the rats to play and interact with other rats, as opposed to being in their normal cages. The results were staggering; Rats who were able to interact with other rats (make "rat friends") for 9 days had less stress when again exposed to the traumatic experience 3 weeks later." - Psychology Today Blog (Dec 2009)
"Why would a behavior develop across multiple species if it doesn't have some ulterior function? The most common theory is that juveniles play at the skills they will need as adults. But some newer thinking proposes it's more than that. In fact, play seems to have some immediate perks, such as aerobic conditioning, as well as long-term benefits that include preparing animals for the unexpected and giving them a sense of morality... Human children learn similar lessons in their play as they interact with peers and learn which behaviors gain them friends and social status and which do not, say researchers." - American Psychological Association (March 2002)
"Encouraging children to entertain themselves in mentally active and imaginative ways and to avoid passive, quick-fix entertainment could also reduce boredom. “We provide children lots of entertainment in the form of television and iPods to prevent them from developing their inner skills to contend with boredom,” Sundberg says. Engaging in active entertainment, such as playing sports or games, is also much more likely to produce flow, Csikszentmihalyi says. Developing ways to cope with boredom may even help cure other ills. For example, some research hints that if former drug addicts learn to deal effectively with boredom, they are less likely to relapse. In an ongoing study of 156 addicts at a methadone clinic at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, Todman found that the addicts’ reported level of boredom was the only reliable indicator of whether they would stay clean." - Scientific American (Dec 2007)
"Playtime Is Over" - The New York Times (March 2010)
"Can PLAY Diminish ADHD and Facilitate the Construction of the Social Brain?" - PubMed (May 2007)
Part 1 of 3 "Development experts say children suffer due to lack of unstructured fun" - Post-Gazette (Oct 2002)
Part 2 of 3 "Creative play makes better problem-solvers" - Post-Gazette (Oct 2002)
Part 3 of 3 "Experts call unstructured play essential to children's growth" - Post-Gazette (Oct 2002)
Young Children Need to Play!
Self-Regulation, Creative Play, and Television via Unplug Your Kids more at tvSmarter blog Fairies and Philosophy
"Recently, I've had to change my mind about the very nature of knowledge because of an obvious, but extremely weird fact about children - they pretend all the time. Walk into any preschool and you'll be surrounded by small princesses and superheroes in overalls - three-year-olds literally spend more waking hours in imaginary worlds than in the real one. Why? Learning about the real world has obvious evolutionary advantages and kids do it better than anyone else. But why spend so much time thinking about wildly, flagrantly unreal worlds? " - Edge (2008)
Preschoolers do better when they talk to themselves
The Varieties of Play Match the Requirements of Human Existence - Psychology Today Blog (Oct 2008)
"Children Educate Themselves III: The Wisdom of Hunter-Gatherers" - Psychology Today Blog (August 2008)
"Have you ever stopped to think about how much children learn in their first few years of life, before they start school, before anyone tries in any systematic way to teach them anything? Their learning comes naturally; it results from their instincts to play, explore, and observe others around them." - Psychology Today Blog (July 2008)
Why We Should Stop Segregating Children by Age: Part III—Older Children Are Excellent Models, Helpers, and Teachers - Psychology Today Blog (Sept 2008)
"How Play Promotes Reasoning in Children and Adults" - Psychology Today Blog (Dec 2008)
"Of Robotic Vacuum Cleaners and Free Range Children" - Psychology Today Blog (April 2010)
"From landscape to playscape" - San Francisco Chronicle (July 2009)
Self-Regulation, Creative Play, and Television via Unplug Your Kids more at tvSmarter blog Fairies and Philosophy
"The Changing Nature of Play: Implications for Pediatric Spinal Cord Injury" - PubMed (Jan 2007)
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Kids Not Playing
"American children aged 2-11 are watching more and more television than they have in years. New findings from The Nielsen Company show kids aged 2-5 now spend more than 32 hours a week on average in front of a TV screen. The older segment of that group (ages 6-11) spend a little less time, about 28 hours per week watching TV, due in part that they are more likely to be attending school for longer hours." - Neilsen Wire (Oct 2009)
"Young people spend an average of three hours a day watching TV, and close to four hours a day (3:51) when videos and prerecorded shows are included. TV-watching time is highest among younger kids: 8-to 10-year-olds spend more than four hours a day (4:10), including videos and recorded shows. (page 26)" - Kaiser Study (2005)
"While most teenagers (60 percent) spend on average 20 hours per week in front of television and computer screens, a third spend closer to 40 hours per week, and about 7 percent are exposed to more than 50 hours of 'screen-time' per week, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's 48th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention." - Science Daily (March 2008)
"A poll of 2,100 children conducted by the Telegraph has found that half of eight to 14-year-olds watch a minimum of four hours of television a day during term time. Even more time is spent in front of the television at weekends and holidays, with some children more than doubling their daily viewing." - The Telegraph (July 2004)
"Development experts say children suffer due to lack of unstructured fun" - Post-Gazette (Oct 2002)
"Now an alarming new survey from the Children's Society and the Children's Play Council reveals just how unhealthy the next generation has become. The poll of 670 children, which was released yesterday, shows 40 per cent don't go out as much as they would like and 20 per cent admit they spend less than an hour a week outdoors." - Mirror UK News (March 2005)
"Getting Lost in the Great Indoors. Many Adults Worry Nature Is Disappearing From Children's Lives" - The Washington Post (June 2007)
"Neighborhoods are like ghost towns, kids don't play outside" - Daily 49er (Sept 2006)
"...exercising regularly and staying thin will reduce lifetime CAD incidence and death. Thus, if you are highly oriented towards protecting your child from fatal accidents, say by encouraging them to stay indoors, this could actually reduce their safety and life expectancy over the course of their lives." - Psychology Today Blog (Nov 2009)
"Why Day Care Kids Don’t Play Outside" - The New York Times Blog (May 2008)
"Mom lets 9-year-old take subway home alone. Columnist stirs controversy with experiment in childhood independence" - MSNBC (April 2008)
"Of course, some children are pushed to anxiety through too many résumé-boosting activities. The problem is when this tiny sliver of American children sets the cultural narrative, chipping away at support for additional study time and the after-school activities that less-privileged children need. Already, districts facing budget crises are putting sports and after-school programs on the chopping block. It's like college health centers fretting over anorexia when the greater risk for most students is obesity. In a world in which only 23% of ACT-takers show scores that indicate "college readiness" in math, English, reading and science, and when studies peg the average teen television time somewhere between 15 and 24 hours a week, most children are not at risk of being overscheduled." - The Wall Street Journal (Sept 2009)
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